The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper

About the Book

'Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying aces, an object of thrilled adulation. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender.' Nabokov (quoted here), Camus, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, even Julian Barnes... it's safe to say the goalkeeper hasn't always been a team player.

In THE OUTSIDER, Jonathan Wilson traces the sometimes dangerous intellectual and literary preoccupations of the keeper, and looks at how the position has secured a certain existential cool, as well as taking a deep tactical and technical look at the history of goalkeeping. There has been the odd, minor work on goalkeeping in the past, but nothing like this in scope or depth.

About the Author :
Jonathan Wilson is the football correspondent for the Financial Times, and writes for the Sunday Telegraph and Guardian on-line. His work has appeared in the Independent, Independent on Sunday, Fourfourtwo and When Saturday Comes. He is the critically acclaimed author of BEHIND THE CURTAIN: TRAVELS IN EASTERN EUROPEAN FOOTBALL, SUNDERLAND: A CLUB TRANSFORMED and INVERTING THE PYRAMID: A HISTORY OF FOOTBALL TACTICS, which won a National Sporting Club Award and was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.

Review :
absorbing... Wilson's book offers a Christmas pudding of a narrative, richly packed with diverting nuggets of goalie lore Wilson's thoughtful look into one of football's most under-discussed positions took him across several continents in search of some of the most eccentric, intellectual and downright bizarre individuals to have starred in the game... engrossing... The seamless and fascinating story of this curious outsider is a resounding success, and Wilson has once again come up trumps a splendid history of football's complicated scapegoats fascinating... From the obese, to the heroic and the corrupt, goalkeepers provide endless anecdotal material. Wilson weaves it together skilfully, from Victorian times to the present, from Charterhouse to Cameroon. The case for the position provoking a kind of existential unease is elegantly made Wilson's 'part technical, part tactical, part cultural reassessment' is as fascinating a study as FFT has ever seen on the psyche and evolution of the keeper. From tales of tragedy to examining the recent rise of American stoppers, you'll never view No.1 in the same way again Jonathan Wilson usually gives you more than you bargain for and The Outsider is no different... So plentiful were the extroverts and introverts in the goalkeeping fraternity, one wonders how it has taken this long for such a detailed all-encompassing account to emerge In The Outsider, Jonathan Wilson offers an ebullient history of the goalkeeper and tries to work out what it is that attracts the spiritual, the quizzical, the odd and the reflective to the position... Wilson offers a picture of the goalkeeper as an outsider, but also more of an everyman than you might think. Few other positions in football are worth writing a book about... It is the goalkeeper who is the true object of fascination. As Jonathan Wilson points out in his excellently researched and written The Outsider, the reason for this is probably that the whole purpose of goalkeeping is to thwart everyone else the ever-readable Wilson explores the psychological pressures of being cast in the role of the scapegoat...Thought-provoking and full of interesting detail... this book scores on every level The Outsider is a terrific history of its subject. It wears its knowledgeable perspective lightly and deftly works its vast research into the text without battering you over the head with it. Wilson can always be relied upon to come up with something a little bit different and a little bit special, and this has plenty of both The Outsider is a terrific history of its subject. It wears its knowledgeable perspective lightly, and deftly works its vast research into the text without battering you over the head with it. Wilson can always be relied upon to come up with something a little bit different and a little bit special and this has plenty of both